GOD WILL FORGIVE AND FORGET

"Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered." (Psalm 32:1)

When I was a little boy, I had an incredibly amazing ability to get in trouble, especially with my mother. In the summers when I was out of school, and mom was at work, I found that trouble had a way of finding me as I searched for ways to entertain myself. Ashley, Illinois, was a tiny little town, and other than exploring up and down the two sets of railroad tracks that crossed through town, or climbing the water tower to do some fine artistic work for all to see…Ashley was pretty tough place to find suitable entertainment for a young boy like me.

One fine summer day at age 13, I was particularly creative in my day’s entertainment. We had a single shot .22 caliber rifle in the house (I’m still not certain where it came from or why we had it) and, I thought it might be a good day for some target practice. I already knew I couldn’t go out into the yard and shoot at the black birds up in the trees, because our neighbors always got a bit hostile when they saw me outside with a rifle and heard bullets ricocheting off the branches (I personally think they were overreacting.)

So, being the creative boy that I was…I decided that while sitting in mom’s chair inside the house in the living room, and with the front door open, I had a clear shot at the wooden Railroad Crossing sign at the corner of our yard. The “O” in Crossing, would be a great target. Over the next 10 minutes, six carefully aimed shots rang out from somewhere in Ashley (after all, no one could really PROVE where they came from.) I rose from my sniper’s perch in the living room and prepared to check out my marksmanship. You can imagine the stunned look on my face to see that I had not thought to open the screen door, and there were six bullet holes in the wire screen! (I have never claimed to be the sharpest knife in the drawer.)

Panic began to creep in my being. This definitely qualified for one of my mom’s famous whuppin’s! My mind began to think of what should I do…just confess and throw myself on mom’s mercy…or, try to cover it up. I brilliantly chose the second option. With tooth picks and tweezers, I carefully moved each broken wire of the screen back (sort of) into place, thinking that she wouldn’t notice it for years,…maybe even after I had grown up and moved away.

When mom came home…it was as if she had a GPS tuned into the front screen door. She looked at the mangled wires in the screen and asked me if there was something I wanted to tell her. I replied, " No mom, you would be mad at me…I would rather pray to God about it, because God will forgive me and forget about it.”

Even at 13 years old, I knew one of the greatest salvation benefits of all, the reality of sins forgiven. "We who received the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior enjoy freedom from the eternal condemnation of our sins." (Romans 8:1) …"and we can also have daily forgiveness and cleansing" (1 John 1:9).

Oh, while I may have impressed mom by invoking God's forgiveness....I still got the whuppin’…which was well deserved, I might add. And, I recognize I likely would have done much better with the confession and mercy thing. But, the spirit lesson in all this is that when we acknowledge our guilt with true repentance, God stands ready to forgive because of what His Son Jesus Christ did on the cross…even bullet holes in the screen door.